Sgt. Bill Cahir, courtesy of Bill Cahir Memorial Fund

On August 13, US Marine Sergeant William Cahir was killed while serving our country in Afghanistan. Before moving to the Washington, DC area, Bill was from the same small town in Central Pennsylvania where I grew up. Although I didn’t know him personally, we shared several friends. He was an inspiration to everyone around him, and I donated to his campaign when he ran for Congress last year. Selfless and committed, service was not a goal but the rule. Service to family, community and country were not a question but a given.

Out of college he went to Capitol Hill to try and make a difference. Frustrated by partisanship, he became a journalist to better inform the public. The September 11, 2001 attacks drove Bill off the sidelines. He joined the U.S. Marine Corps at age 34 to personally take up the fight. Bill served two tours in Iraq. In 2008, Bill’s belief in service and country led him to resign his job as a journalist to run for Congress in his home community. He wanted to influence how the Iraq/Afghanistan wars were being fought. In the spring of 2009, he deployed to Afghanistan.

Bill left behind his loving wife and two expected children. If you’d like to help out his family during their time of loss and need, please visit the Bill Cahir Memorial Fund website and follow the links to donate.

Ben Stanfield

A decade ago, Ben Stanfield found himself at the intersection of politics and technology as he wandered nomadically around the country managing congressional races. But when he moved to DC 6 years ago, he found that the intersection had become, in the grand tradition of L’Enfant, a circle where politics and technology were joined by science, photography and a host of smaller side streets of interest. These days, he works as a Macintosh Server Administrator for a large governmental health institute in Bethesda. In his spare time, he’s an avid photographer, charter member at HacDC, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Columbia Heights Youth Club. In 2005 he founded of Draft Obama, a national grassroots movement to convince Barack Obama to run for President. Everything he writes here speaks for itself and not on behalf of any other group, organization, person, or any of his other personalities.